Heart Upon My Sleeve
by Pickwick12
Summary: Othello character perspectives inspired by the National Theater production starring Rory Kinnear and Adrian Lester. Will include all major characters.
1. Honest Iago

**Honest Iago**

He has always fancied himself honest; he still fancies himself honest. It's the world that doesn't understand what true honesty is. They don't realize that in the end, you can only look out for #1. The truest person is the man who doesn't shrink back from doing the ugliest thing in the service of his own destiny. Sacrifices must be made, friendships subverted, the softer virtues dismissed in the name of self-advancement.

What is a man if he does not achieve, his worth if he makes no name for himself? Leave it to the weak, dishonest people to be good—those not brave enough to admit their selfishness, who hide behind the veneer of benevolence. The world is made to be used, and the people in it to use one another, until the able claw their way to the top, and the weak fall behind.

He had friends, once. He even loved. He tried their way, but he realized, soon enough, that it was all a game—the baser passions still raged within, only masked by the bright screen of altruism. Being true to himself, he had finally realized, meant unmasking the cold determination to make his mark on the world. All who could be used for his purposes were safe, for a time. Those who subverted him, whether by design or accident, were doomed to fall under the steel toe of his intentions.

His last look at Othello, the dead Moor, was neither of triumph nor of failure. It was merely the gaze of truth recognized. Finally, the reality of his mind, his every desire, his unholy freezing passion, was expressed in the mutilated chaos of a single room. He had never felt more honest.


	2. Unvarnished Othello

**Unvarnished Othello**

Brave Othello. Good Othello. Noble Othello. All his life, others labeled him. Slave, Freedman, General. None of the words meant anything to him. He grew to love Desdemona because she wept for him, and in so doing, she wept for the man Othello, never thinking of him as a title or a symbol of the things others wished him to be. She was the one who saw him as he truly was—Othello, and nothing more.

When he labeled her whore, it was himself he named once again. He hated her for what her dishonesty meant—a new name, Betrayed Othello. No longer could he see his true self reflected in the mirror of her eyes. He threw words at her like bullets, but each came back and thudded deeply, painfully, dully into his heart. Each of her new names became his own.

Squeezing the life from Desdemona was a final, frenzied attempt to rip every label from him, to finally become Othello, and only Othello, once again. But when she was gone, too late, he realized his error. His hands had permanently affixed on him every label he'd tried desperately to escape, and his true self had perished forever.


	3. Good Emilia

**Good Emilia**

She has always done what had to be done. The one time she thought about herself was the grand mistake of her life, her marriage to the ensign with the piercing eyes. She reasons, late at night, that she deserved what came after. People were not meant to please themselves.

Goodness is to her as much a uniform as her boots or the khaki t-shirt she despises. It does not, she thinks, make her virtuous. It simply keeps her alive, in a world where chaos threatens to swallow her whole. Goodness is order and reason.

Most of the time, she thinks of him with indifferent dislike, the husband with the rough lips and grating voice. He is nothing to her, not any more, and it infuriates him. He is like an ant or a spider now—unpleasant, but without enough significance to warrant her real attention.

Not until the end does she realize the true depth of his evil. If she is cloaked in overt, clumsy goodness, he is equally shrouded in wickedness. Then, and only then, does he become her enemy. He was not enough; now he is too much. She opens her mouth to speak; it is the only weapon she still possesses. She knows she will not outlive her crusade, and she does not care. People, after all, were never meant to live for themselves.


	4. Abused Desdemona

**Abused Desdemona**

She has always belonged to someone, but not in the sweet way, the way romantic books mean when they talk about tender lovers locked in embrace. No, she has been chattel, property, the belonging of her father. As she grew, she realized he did not have the capacity to love without possessing. For him, care was control, and affection was suffocation. She began to plot how quickly she could escape his grasp.

The Moor offered freedom. He was from faraway, with tales sometimes sad, other times filled with laughter. He promised a life far from her gilded cage and the inescapable, heavy hand of her father. She took his hand instead, running from her chains without looking back.

Old habits die hard. She thought her world would grow, but it shrank, smaller and smaller. Too soon, she realized how much her husband resembled her father, how unable he was to love without crushing the object of his affection.

The symbolic suffocation of a father became the literal press of a lover's hands. Desdemona knew, with her final breath, that escape had never been possible on this side of the grave.


End file.
